Speaker: Martina Wiltschko (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Title: The grammar of knowing: A lesson from cross-linguistic patterns for markedness
Date: Thursday 20 May
Venue: Skype (contact us to get access to the meeting)
Time: 15.15 – 16.30 hrs
Abstract:
In this talk, I present evidence from a range of linguistic phenomena that the most unmarked types of clauses are used to assert a speaker’s knowledge about the actual world. This evidence includes propositional attitude verbs, modality, clause-typing, mood, evidentiality, and discourse particles. While it is not the case that knowledge cannot be marked as such, I show that it need not be linguistically marked. This invites the conclusion that knowledge is also the most basic mental representation, thus contributing to a long-standing philosophical debate regarding the nature of knowledge.